ANDREW PIERCE: Red Ed's very uncivilised sabotage bid

Ed Miliband will be relying on a cadre of battle-hardened veterans to scupper the Bill, which has been passed by the Commons

The House of Lords, in stark contrast to the unruly House of Commons, used to be a civilised place where political deals were often agreed over port and cigars.

While the Commons Speaker John Bercow often struggles to assert his authority over noisy MPs, Baroness D’Souza, his Upper House counterpart, has no such difficulty.

But this week the Lords will be transformed into a bear-pit as Labour peers try to block the Tory MP James Wharton’s Bill calling for a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU in 2017.

Ed Miliband will be relying on a cadre of battle-hardened veterans to scupper the Bill, which has been passed by the Commons.

Leading the charge will be the Brussels-loving Lord Foulkes, the former Scottish Labour MP, who has tabled at least 40 time-wasting amendments on this subject. Foulkes was a leading light in the ill-fated ‘Britain in Europe’ group, set up in 1997 to campaign for the country to enter the single currency.

After Lady Thatcher’s landmark Bruges speech in 1988, warning against the creation of a European superstate, he said: ‘The Prime Minister must learn to hold her tongue and not treat Europeans to her own inimitable brand of foghorn diplomacy.’

A colourful character, Lord Foulkes hit the headlines in 1993 when he resigned from Labour’s front bench after admitting to being drunk and disorderly.

He came in for criticism after claiming £45,000 in expenses in 2008 to stay in a London flat that he inherited from his mother, and £54,527 in expenses from the House of Lords in one year while simultaneously sitting as a member of the Scottish Parliament. Kerrching!

Penny Mordaunt, the Tory MP who on Saturday night was kicked off the
terrible TV programme Splash!, starring Olympian Tom Daley, is giving
her appearance fee to a fund to renovate a swimming pool in her
Portsmouth constituency.

Yet
in her latest parliamentary expenses, there is a claim for 90p to
travel to the pool, which is a two-minute drive from her constituency
office — in the same road.

Suffolk South Tory MP Tim Yeo has produced a website that is groaning with the names of senior MPs backing his fight against de-selection

The Suffolk South Tory MP Tim Yeo has produced a website that is groaning with the names of senior MPs backing his fight against de-selection.

Yeo, who has never bothered to live in the constituency, has the backing of the Chancellor George Osborne and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary.

Last year, Yeo attacked David Cameron over his failure to order a third runway at Heathrow.

‘The PM must decide whether he is a man or a mouse,’ he thundered.

‘Does he want to be another Harold Macmillan presiding over a dignified slide towards insignificance ... or is there a trace of Thatcher?’

As a result, there’s no trace of Cameron on Yeo’s website.

When it comes to Red Ed’s judgment, here’s what he boasted after the beleaguered French President Francois Hollande swept into the Elysee Palace: ‘This new leadership is sorely needed as Europe seeks to escape from austerity ... he has shown that the centre-Left can offer hope and win elections with a vision of a better, more equal and just world.’

More equal? Does that mean cheating on the mother of your children with a mistress ... and then cheating on that mistress, too?

In his latest bank-bashing speech, Ed Miliband failed to name-check his shadow chancellor Ed Balls, whose voice was also conspicuously absent from Labour’s reaction to the Tories planning to raise the minimum wage to £7 an hour.

As the Conservative MP Greg Hands said: ‘Nothing from Ed Balls on Twitter all week. No comments on the minimum wage. Nothing. Something is up.’

Yet Miliband said yesterday that Balls was safe in his job until the General Election. There’s nothing more ominous than that sort of vote of confidence.

Last week Carwyn Jones, the Labour leader of the Welsh Assembly, was hailed in a glowing profile in The Guardian as a role model for Red Ed, should Miliband become Prime Minister.

Yet as storms left what the BBC described as a ‘trail of chaos’ along the Welsh coastline, Jones demonstrated his leadership credentials by jetting off on a week-long trip to Uganda. Photographed in a short-sleeved shirt in baking sunshine, Jones tweeted: ‘Humbled by the warmth of the welcome — and warmth shown to Wales and Welsh people — by the people of Uganda.’

Are the hundreds of Welsh householders suffering in the floods feeling quite so warm towards the glorious leader?